Finger Eleven Spook-tacular Show
written by Chris van Staalduinen
It was the night before Halloween and C-FOX radio’s annual Halloween bash featured Canadian alt-rockers Finger Eleven headlining a spook-tacular evening. Okay, bad puns aside, it was a fun night with costumes, Rock ‘n Roll and even a little mystery.
Langley boys Yuca opened the show with a thunderous alt-rock set, followed by fellow locals Head of the Herd. The latter rocked the crowd with their multi-layered blues/alternative set, featuring their hit “By This Time Tomorrow”. Both bands had great energy and were clearly proud to be playing a hometown show with the not-quite senior citizens of the Canadian alternative scene.
The headliners came out in matching skull makeup, playing with the dark theme of the evening, much to the delight of the 50% costumed crowd. Their set isn’t fancy and filled with show, instead it’s minimal lights and distractions, just rock from top to bottom. They are a tight band, if not super-flashy – it’s clearly their business. It’s also their pleasure; it must be or they couldn’t still be making new music (Five Crooked Lines) all these years later. They mixed those new songs with their hits, much of the latter saved for their well deserved encore. Among the highlights for me was their hit “Paralyzer”, which they expertly mixed with some classic Phil Collins and Pink Floyd. The whole set was high energy and it kept the crowd hopping.
As for the mystery – it was the setup of the Hard Rock Vancouver theatre. It was set up to feel like a formal dinner of some sort, with white linens covering four or eight person tables. The upper section was left to it’s usual theatre seating, but the lower seemed to have a plan, I guessed to do with Halloween. In the end, nothing happened. There was no food; no gimmick; seemingly no reason for the weird setup other than to make my back sore and offer people more opportunity to spill drinks in the walkways.
I suppose, overall it’s just a harmless mystery on an otherwise fun-filled, spooky, alternative evening. Yuca and Head of the Herd show that they are up and comers and Finger Eleven continue to show why they’re still alive when so many other bands from the nineties have come and gone.
Check out our Kelowna Finger Eleven show review HERE.
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written by Chris van Staalduinen